USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland, Ohio, Volume I > Part 58
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The original plan of the club was to have twelve afternoon recitals given by the active members, and three evening artist recitals to which the public was invited to take what seats the club did not use.
In May, 1901, the club had a musical festival which lasted five days. Thomas' Orchestra came for two concerts, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. This was the beginning of the symphony concerts. During the follow- ing winter under the auspices of the Fortnightly Club and the efficient man- agement of Mrs. Adella Prentiss Hughes, the regular series of seven symphony concerts began. For nine years then Clevelanders have been able to hear the fin- est orchestras of the country and with the orchestras the best soloists. The afternoon concerts, twelve in number, are under the able management of Mrs. F. B. Sanders. During the winter of 1909-1910 these concerts were given at the Colonial Club. Due to the continual musical growth of the club, the afternoon recitals are no longer confined to the active members. Singers, pianists, violin- ists and musical lecturers from abroad appear in turn before the club and the Kneisel String Quartet has become an annual treat. Several programs each season are still given by the active members and are greatly enjoyed ; they compare most favorably with the outside talent.
One of the finest features of the Fortnightly Club is the giving of altruistic concerts by the active members. These concerts are given in homes for aged people, for the blind, in social settlements and in public schools. These concerts raise the standard of music and cultivate a love for it besides bringing a vast amount of good cheer and enjoyment to the aged and infirm who have no
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From a photograph. Courtesy "Waechter und Anzeiger"
SAENGERFEST HALL, 1874 Euclid Avenue between Case (East 40th) and Willson (East 55th ) avennes
From a photograph. Courtesy "Waechter und Anzeiger"
SAENGERFEST HALL, 1893 Willson and Scovill avenues
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other opportunity of hearing good music. Twenty-two of these concerts were given last year.
Still another phase of the Fortnightly Club is the study section which meets a day or two previous to each symphony concert, when the orchestral program is studied and explained. By thus understanding the music, the interpretation given by the orchestra becomes the more instructive and enjoyable.
The first president of the Fortnightly was Mrs. Edward W. Morley, who served two years. Mrs. Samuel Prentiss Baldwin was president for three years and was followed by Mrs. John Howard Webster, who served three years. Mrs. David Z. Norton followed and was president six years. In 1907 Mrs. John Howard Webster was again elected and is still the president of the club.
Aside from the usual officers there is a competent executive board under whose supervision all business of the club is transacted.
The aim of the club is to bring only the best before the members, a worthy ambi- tion. The interests of the club are broadening each year. For instance, last year the club contributed one hundred dollars toward the prize fund for the best musi- cal composition written by an American. In the general musical progress of the country the Fortnightly Club will not be found wanting.
ORGANISTS.
Charles Koebler, a composer, and a builder of organs, came to Cleveland about 1850. So far as any records show, he was one of the first organists to play in a Cleveland church.
Among the present organists of Cleveland, many deserve special mention, because, outside of their professional duties, they are generously giving the public the benefit of their talents in twilight recitals and in vesper services. At the Old Stone Church William B. Colson; at Trinity Cathedral, Frank Kraft; at Epworth Memorial Church, Herbert Sisson; at Unity Church, James H. Rogers ; and at St. Paul's, Charles E. Clemens. During the college year Mr. Clemens also gives a recital each Sunday following the vesper service at the college for women. This recital is open to the public as well as to the college students. Mr. Clemens de- serves further mention in that he is well known in the musical world outside of Cleveland. He frequently gives organ recitals and dedicates new organs in other cities.
TEACHERS AND COMPOSERS.
This little sketch would not be quite complete without some mention of Cleveland's teachers. As the number exceeds five hundred, only a very few of them can be enumerated. Mrs. Seabury C. Ford, Cleveland's best known singer, is an eminent teacher of the voice. Felix Hughes is a vocal teacher and singer who has had the best of training and is a thorough teacher.
Edwin Douglas, Francis Sadlier, William Saal, Albert H. Hurd, Miss Kath- erine Lowe, and Miss Grace Probert are well known as teachers of the voice.
Many piano teachers have been previously mentioned in connection with conservatories and the organists are nearly all piano teachers as well. Aside
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from these, Herman Kortheuer is a well-known teacher; Wm. A. Becker is a pianist and composer who has been received with enthusiasm in European music centers ; Marinus Salomons, although only a short time in Cleveland, is recognized as a thorough teacher and is well known as a concert player.
Teachers are known and rated according to the results of their work, and what is true of all western cities is true of Cleveland, namely, that when pupils are well drilled and technically trained to the point of excelling in their work, they leave for New York, Boston or Europe, where the opportunities of hear- ing music are greater, but the teaching is often not superior to that of the home city, and the last teacher usually is given the credit for whatever the pupil accomplishes.
The best known teacher and composer of Cleveland has not as yet been mentioned. His parents distinguished a not unusual name by giving him the prefix, Wilson George. In Wilson G. Smith, Cleveland has a musician who is unique. He does not ally himself with any school or organization; independence is his keynote. He is a clever essayist, an able and fearless critic, a teacher of renown, and, above all, a composer of unusual merit. His "Hommage à Edward Grieg" was warmly commended by the great Scandinavian. Mr. Smith has also paid homage to Schumann, Chopin and Schubert. Rupert Hughes says of Mr. Smith, "In all he has achieved remarkable success, for he has done more than copy their little tricks of expression and oddities of manner and pet weaknesses. He has caught the individuality and the spirit of each man." Aside from these tributes to other musicians, Mr. Smith has written numer- ous compositions for the piano and some most delightful songs. In all of these works there is a charm of freshness and an originiality that is fascinating. From his wide experience in teaching, he has written a number of most helpful technical studies.
The name of James H. Rogers is now being placed close to the top of the list of modern song writers. Thus far, the number of songs is not so very large but their quality commends them to all lovers of exquisite music.
Johann Beck is a composer of whom the critics speak in most glowing terms, but unfortunately none of his music has ever been published. Mr. Beck has written almost exclusively for orchestras and the scores are unusually complex. Many of his works have been given public performance in Germany, where Mr. Beck spent many years in study.
Charles V. Rychlik is another Clevelander who is coming to the fore in his compositions for stringed instruments. Charles Sommers composes piano music and is also leader of the Canton Symphony Orchestra.
Miss Patty Stair is gaining a well deserved reputation as a clever composer, especially of part songs for women's voices. Mrs. Fanny Snow Knowlton has composed excellent part songs for women's voices, among them "The Mermaid" is widely known.
Cleveland has been much criticised as a city that lacks in musical apprecia- tion. Musicians are numerous but the art does not flourish. The really artistic recitals are not well attended, but when anything that tends toward the spec- tacular, anything that is of huge proportions and social importance comes, then Cleveland leaves her cozy fireside and is willing to sit in a draught or next to a
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Damitfahrschmidt;
Herman Kerflower .
John Her Homer.
John Beman.
O.V. Schubert,
Lous Loeb.
7.6. Gottwald.
Emel Hechoschmidt
otto Bacher.
max Bohm.
arthur Schneider
From a half-tone engraving. Courtesy Waechter und Anzeiger
PIONEER ARTISTS OF CLEVELAND-THE "OLD BOHEMIANS"
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hot steam pipe and permit the saucy head above the proscenium in the barn-like armory to protrude its tongue in impudent mockery.
This criticism of Cleveland is just and unjust. Just, because it is true, and unjust, because Cleveland lacks the opportunity of educating her people to appreciate the best in art.
A benefactor is needed for Cleveland such as Cincinnati had in Reuben Springer and Pittsburg in Andrew Carnegie.
The progress of one art merges insensibly into the success of another. An art gallery and a music hall! One alone will create a greater need of the other. The two will stimulate each other, and with such a hope realized Cleveland will distinctly rise to a higher plane as a city of culture. A' city cannot become one of culture by merely having an established number of musical events in a season, but by making it possible for her citizens to absorb the subtle influences of all the arts.
Perhaps the day is not far distant when Cleveland may listen to the great orchestras and soloists in a temple fit for the divine art.
CHAPTER XLIX.
ART.
By Carl Lorenz.
Half a century ago there was no art life in the city of Cleveland. Here and there a young man or woman might have been found struggling with brush and palette full of enthusiasm and perhaps not without talent. But the atmosphere was missing, and in many cases also the schooling. Even architecture was a thing of the future at that time, and the fine arts were represented by a very few real paintings in the homes of the very few lovers of art to be found in Cleveland. One or two wood carvers, and three or four clever stone cutters, foreigners by birth, constituted the art colony of our city, reminiscent of log cabins and wooden shanties from the first half of the last century.
It was after the war of rebellion, when Cleveland took a new lease on life, and its growth had become rapid, not to say feverish, that the first signs of an artistic activity were perceived which developed hesitating talents, created a fraternity of artists, and culminated in our days in the erection of a modern art school and a prospective art museum.
In the early '70s a number of young men, some mere boys yet, and a few older fellows, devoted much of their free time to the cultivation of their artistic longings and talents. As their names will show, they were the children of German immigrants or immigrants themselves, and all of them poor men, working hard for a living and an education. The parents of some were living in Cleveland, while others had drifted into the city from nearby towns and villages. These enthusiastic young men were George Grossman, F. C. Gott- wald, John Semon, Adam Lehr, Louis Loeb, Herman Herkomer, John Herko-
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mer, O. V. Schubert, Daniel Wehrschmidt, Emil Wehrschmidt, Otto Bacher, Arthur Schneider and Max Bohm. It was but natural that these men should learn to know each other, and finally form a society of artists. Thus the first art club in the city of Cleveland was started in the year of 1876.
About the same time the city government of Cleveland moved into their new city hall on Superior avenue. The politicians of those days were shrewd liberal men ; the top floor of the new municipal building stood empty, and soon the artists found spacious homes up there. One studio after another was opened up, and the art club itself occupied the large east room of the building. This was in 1882. Two years later the art club founded the Cleveland Art school, which was also opened in the top floor of the city hall. The politicians below were easy going landlords, and the artists above were a merry set of people. In a very few years the artistic activity had taken huge proportions. The very walls in the upper hall bore testimony thereof. If there was no Trilby foot to be seen, one could find a great variety of charcoal drawings, good, bad and in- different, yet always expressing the humor of the Boheme which was reigning up there, nearer to heaven than to earth. Nevermore can there be such a happy epoch of the art life of Cleveland as in those days. The club and the school were flourishing; the artists worked always full of ambition, if often empty of stomach.
The art school at the top floor of the city hall had as its neighbor the Cleve- land School of Art, founded in October, 1882, by Mrs. S. H. Kimball. In a short time the number of pupils became too great for a private residence, and once more the top floor had to offer its hospitality. The growth of the school was marvelous. The latter became in 1888 a department of the Western Reserve University, under the wings of which it remained until 1891. In that year Miss Georgie L. Norton from Boston became the principal of the school, which in 1892 was removed from the city hall to the old Kelley residence on Willson avenue. The success of the school in a short time demanded more ample accommodations and the friends of the institution started a building fund. The late Judge Stevenson Burke and his wife subscribed most liberally, also Mr. J. H. Wade, who gave besides an admirable site of one and a half acres of land for a new building. Within a few years the donations were sufficient to assure the erection of the building. Work was begun in 1904 near the junction of Juniper road and Magnolia avenue, and two years later the new school was opened. The building is fireproof, fifty-four by one hundred and six feet, con- structed of Roman vitrified bricks and terra cotta, and in the Renaissance style. There are three large studios, besides other rooms, and an exhibition hall, lighted by day through a semielliptical roof of opalescent glass covered with ribbon sky- light glass. In 1908 the school was enlarged by a separate studio for the devel- opment of sculpture. The means for this building were furnished by Mr. Thomas H. White. The arrangements in this studio are complete and modern in every detail for its purpose.
The Art School and the artists' studios in the city hall remained but a few years longer after the removal of the School of Art. The growth of the city increased the demand for more office room, and higher and higher rose the flood of politicians. Mayor John H. Farley in 1898 ejected the artists from the top
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STATUE OF MOSES FOR THE NEW COURTHOUSE By Herman Matson
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floor, the Art School having died away somewhat earlier. Nothing remained of the former glory but the walls with their decorations. These, too, disappeared a little later under a coat of whitewash. Sic transit gloria mundi !
In the early '90s a Camera club was founded, followed by some remark- able exhibitions of art photography. The art of the camera found its fuller expression in Carle Semon, nephew of John Semon, the landscape painter, and a man of really artistic achievements. The Brush and Palette club was formed in 1893, and one year later the Water Color society sprang into existence. The three clubs held frequent expositions, and thus it happened that the general public learned to know of the existence of art life in the city. These exposi- tions found much favor and became society events. In those years, as well as in the '8os, Ryder's art store on Superior street was the only place with an art gallery that could properly be called such. It never paid of course, but an exhibition of paintings in the small, yet at least well lighted room, saw many of the people who cared for art matters.
The year 1893 saw the only great exposition of fine arts ever held in the city of Cleveland. It was known as the Art Loan exhibition, and housed in the Garfield building. The times were bad then, and the suffering was great among the poor. The rich people felt it their duty to do something for the alleviation of the general suffering. Someone proposed an art exhibit, one worthy of the name. The possessors of paintings all over the land were appealed to. The response was generous, and in a short time several hundreds of worthy pictures could be hung. The success of the enterprise' was gratifying in the extreme. A large sum was realized and turned over to the poor funds. Of Clevelanders, Professor Chas. Olney, Mr. Chas. F. Brush, and Mr. W. J. White, all possessors of collections of fine paintings, had most willingly robbed their walls of their treasures in order to insure the artistic success of the exhibition.
The following year a second exhibition of the same nature was arranged. This time, however, some great patriot proposed that only American paintings be admitted and carried the day. The result was a certain monotony of style and execution. Of special interest in connection with this exhibition, was a collection of statuary and a room filled with Napoleonic relics. It was something new in Cleveland and drew large crowds. Thus the second and last art loan exhibition on a large scale was also a successful enterprise. Since then we have seen some things of great artistic values, but at very rare occasions. At times there were on exhibition in the Olney Art gallery Michael Munkacsy's "Christ before Pilate" and "The Last Moments of Mozart," both paintings of world wide fame. Gerome's "Crucifixion" and "The King of the Desert" were also in this gallery which was closed in 1907 after the death of its owner. The art treasures were left by him to Oberlin college, a fact regretfully to be mentioned, by the Cleveland public who had learned to love its treasures.
Out of the grave of La Boheme arose the present period of our art life which finds its concentration in the School of Art and its exhibitions. A new institu- tion was founded on the west side of the city under the name of Westend Art School, and incorporated in the year 1909. As yet the enterprise is small, but has a most energetic young sculptress, Miss Anna Pfenninger at its head. The artists not connected with the School of Art are leading a somewhat lonely
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life, since their scattering at the close of the city hall studios. Shortly after- ward they had opened up a small club house on Bolivar avenue, where they came together for a social evening talking shop and smoking long pipes. But these meetings were the last flickerings of a will-of-the-wisp existence and soon died out. It is not unlikely that the death of Conrad Mizer who was the soul of this club, hastened its dissolution. "Cooney," as the artists proudly called him, was not a painter, but a tailor by trade, and through love a protector of fine arts, a friend of the people, the founder and manager of popular summer and winter concerts. A memorial fountain is erected in his honor in Edgewater park, and well does he deserve this distinction. Mizer was a poor man, but rich in enthusiasm for the beautiful and for mankind. He died rather young and much regretted. His portrait has been painted by one of his artist friends, and, no doubt, will find a place some day in the new art museum to be erected in the near future.
If one thing is lacking sorely in the art life of Cleveland, it is an art museum. There is today in the city no place where an art student or a lover of art may draw inspiration from the works of great masters. But the time is coming, when a million dollar art gallery will look down upon the pretty lake in Wade park. Years ago the munificence of the Wade family provided the site, after three well meaning citizens, H. B. Hurlbut, Thomas Kelley, and John Hunting- ton, had left large bequests for the erection of an art museum. The funds were put into the hands of a few trustees, who as careful and farseeing business men consolidated these donations, took good care of land and money, thus increasing in the course of time the original values, until they are now in possession of a sum large enough to accomplish a great task. The plans for the building are ready and show a work of art worthy to shelter the best masterpieces. A col- lection of art objects is awaiting the new home. It is scattered at the present time. A few paintings are stored away in the basement of the city hall, another number in rooms in the Rose building, and some more in private houses. Thus a nucleus is already formed for Cleveland's first public collection of art treasures.
Looking back upon the last thirty years upon the art life of Cleveland, we find a steady development, keeping step with the growth of the city. The latter, too, advanced in an artistic way, and the fact that the creation of an art com- mission by the legislature has earnestly been suggested, is highly gratifying. Some of the newer buildings in our city show decided architectural merit, and sculptural work or frescos of a modern type.
The new government building with its groups of "Justice" and "Commerce," by D. C. French, furnishes a good example of what our public buildings should be. A masterly achievement of the plastic art is the figure of "Justice," with its fine face of repose and distain. The mural designs in the business place of the Cleveland Savings & Trust Company furnish another example of the awakening desire for artistic beauty. The building that today expresses the most advanced step toward architectural embellishment is the home of the First National bank on Euclid avenue. Here we find a facade of great strength and character- istic conception. There is nothing similar in the whole city, nothing that may be compared with the strong figures, which were modeled to be viewed from a
"UNCLE BIFF" The Philosopher of the "Plain Dealer," by J. H. Donahey
OIL PAINTING BY HENRY G. KELLER
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distance and are thus rather gaining than losing. But what shall we say of the soldiers' and sailors' monument in the public square, and of its location ?
A different monument of the artistic progress of the city of Cleveland is the socalled Group Plan. This plan aims at a grouping of our future public build- ings of which the new postoffice and the new courthouse, also in the course of erection and soon to be finished, form two important parts. A city hall and a main library are to be erected next. The courthouse will be ornamented by the statues of fourteen famous lawgivers, two of which were executed by a Cleveland sculptor.
This leads us to the history of sculpture within the city. While there is little to write about sculptural art in Cleveland, we still have and have had some sculptors worthy of the name.
The most distinguished sculptor who ever made his home in Cleveland is Herman N. Matzen, at the present time one of the professors of the School of Art. He came to this city as a young man, being born in the north of Europe. After a short stay, he returned to the old world, where he studied his art in Berlin and Paris and became a member of the Berlin Royal Academy of Fine Arts. A call from Indianapolis, where a great soldiers' and sailors' monument was under erection, brought him back to this country. He executed the two now famous groups of War and Peace, works full of motion and noble lines. The Cleveland School of Art was in need of an artist and teacher like Herman Matzen, and thus we find him again in our city, where he has done some really artistic things. His most conspicuous work is his statue of Moses, which, to- gether with his Pope Gregory IX, will form two of the fourteen lawgivers to be placed on the new courthouse. His conception of Moses is unique, and yet truer than most of the figures of this ancient giant of intellect. The Moses of Matzen is an old man of strength and soul nobility, one of the superhuman kind that are not born every century, but once in a millennium. The execution of this work of art shows a perfect technique of treatment. The figure is erect, firm of step and resolution, yet there is a certain repose in its very strength, a com- pactness in the handling of the material which creates unity, of much impor- tance in the true art of sculpture. His pope is hardly less meritorious as a piece of plastic art, but naturally does not attract the same attention. There were many popes: there was but one Moses.
The Schiller monument in Detroit, representing the great German poet in his last years, shows Matzen in one of his best moods, and is distinguishable by the beautiful repose of the figure and the pensiveness of the facial expression.
Another remarkable piece of work is his Burke mausoleum at Lake View cemetery, planned by himself and executed under his direction. There, archi- tect and sculptor are one. He shows his mastery of the two different branches, which should form a complete harmony whenever brought in contact with each other. Akron, Ohio, possesses at its new courthouse two statues of his, repre- senting Justice and Law. Both are classical figures of the Roman type, very expressive and very appropriate.
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